The 2084 Precept

by Anthony D. Thompson

  I managed a smile, told her I knew the way and walked along past the offices and into the meeting room. Jeremy stood up to greet me. Business suit as always, striped shirt, dark red tie, and wearing a smile, seemed to be in a good mood.

  "Good morning, Peter," he said, "I am afraid Miss Goodall is not here today. She has a week's vacation. But hopefully you were received in the proper manner by our Miss Monroe?"

  "Certainly," I said. If he was expecting me to show some disappointment, I had none to show.

  "An interesting meeting you had yesterday," he continued.

  "Yes," I replied. "And as I explained, I expect to be contacted again very soon."

  Actually, whether a meeting with the prime minister happened or not, I was anticipating being able to remove myself from this crazy saga fairly soon. I would be driving back to Germany at the weekend and perhaps I could hop off to Spain on the Monday. They would trace me there of course, several ways for them to go about that. But if I drove, and if I didn't take my mobile, and if I parked my car in a public car park in Barcelona, and then used the ferry to get to the island, it would take them some time to find me. First the country, then Mallorca, then me. I was just chewing it over. I needed to give it some more thought. In particular, about how to ensure I could still meet the requirements for being paid in full by Jeremy.

  "Good, that is very good," said Jeremy.

  "The show you put on was also good," I said, "manipulating the minds of so many people simultaneously."

  "Oh, that wasn't actually the case," he replied. "If you think about it, I only had to influence a couple of brains at the front of each line of traffic. It is just a form of hypnosis, as we've discussed."

  Oh well, that was alright then. Only had to influence a couple of brains. Mere hypnosis, about as difficult as drinking a cup of coffee. I wouldn't mind being able to do that, I'd be the world chess champion.

  "Then perhaps we could move on without delay to today's agenda item?" he continued.

  "Fine," I said. "’Environmental management.’"

  I took a deep breath. Here we go again.

  "We have no environmental management, Jeremy. Quite the contrary to what our birdbrains tell us, flap, flap. On the one hand we are completely destroying the environment on this planet, and on the other hand we are doing so at a constantly accelerating pace."

  "Not again," interrupted Jeremy, "it seems that no matter what topic we select, it is always negative, catastrophically so."

  "Yes, and this is another one which is pretty horrific—as I am sure you will agree when you have heard some of the facts. The facts that I know about, that is. I don't have the full story."

  He sighed. The poor guy really would love to hear some positive opinions to further enhance his deluded fantasies, instead of which all he is getting are the facts. Perhaps I should suggest I go out and find a politician and a bishop for him, they would both be happy to provide him with thousands of positive scenarios, make him happy. "O.K., then," he said, "off you go."

  "First of all," I said, "I have to explain the major cause for what is happening. That way you will understand it better. The major cause is overpopulation. The planet used to be able to handle the quantity of filth and pollution and detritus produced by a limited number of human beings. But now it can no longer handle it. The planet is groaning, it is sighing, it is weeping. But we don’t care about that. We just continue reproducing at an alarming and unsustainable rate."

  Jeremy interrupted me with a smile. "No offence, Peter, but facts would move us along faster than groanings and sighings do you think?"

  "Sure Jeremy, my apologies. But listen to this first: it took us about 200,000 years from the time we started to exist to reach a world population of around 300 million, i.e. at about the time Jesus Christ was born. It took us less than 2,000 years after that or, more precisely, until around the time of World War II, to reach a world population of 2 billion. Wow! That’s enough, you might think? No. It is not enough. See if you can believe this: in only 70 years since then, that is to say within some people's lifetimes, the 2 billion number has become over 7 billion. And it will have become more than 11 billion before I die. Facts. Irreversible facts."

  "Irreversible?"

  "Yes, because of the way we are. About 132 million new human beings are being born each year. Roughly 4 per second. And each one, according to our various religions, is appropriately supplied with a soul to help him or her better appreciate the few decades for which they are going to be around. But if 132 million humans are being born, only 56 million are dying. I have included the 1 million suicides in that figure, but I have excluded the 45 million abortions each year, in order to maintain a factual comparison between actual births and the deaths. For the same reason I have also excluded the 2.1 million stillborn babies per year. After all, if you are born dead, you cannot truthfully be said to have been born at all."

  "Hmm…what is a soul?"

  "I don't know, Jeremy. Some kind of spirit or so they say."

  "And you have one as well?"

  "Apparently. So they say. I have no idea where it is. And how it is supposed to interact with my brain and my central nervous system, I have no idea. Nor, since I have no idea what my soul and its intended function is, can I even make a guess."

  "Hmm…" said Jeremy

  "Now, on the one hand, we have China, which, having watched its population grow to 1.3 billion, took a decision to stop the madness. It forbade and prohibited, with some few exceptions, more than one child per family. Of course this has a negative side to it. This resulted in many of the females being aborted before birth or butchered shortly thereafter, their usefulness being deemed inferior to that of the male. However, the overall positive effects of this law are considered to far outweigh the negative ones. The problem is with the rest of the world."

  "The rest of the world doesn't do this?"

  "No, not at all. India, for a start, will soon overtake China as the world's most populated nation; it may already have done so for all I know. And other countries positively encourage more births. It is a human right to be able to reproduce as much as we want, so they say. And then of course, you have our friends again, the elected clowns. Many of these believe that the bigger their populations, the more influence and power, including economic power, they and their nations are going to have. It is a case of 'more means better' again. Take Russia and Germany for example. Both sets of clowns are downright horrified at the lack of population growth."

  "Choose one of them and tell me about it, Peter."

  "Fine, Peter. I’ll make it easy for myself and choose Germany and more or less repeat what I told you in our last meeting. For me, it is worth the repetition just to re-emphasize in your mind the question of human reproduction in return for money. Germany has created a law whereby you get money for each new successful act of reproduction! And the more children you create, the more money you get! You don't want more children? Hah, well how about doing it for money? If we pay you, will you do it? Money, say the clowns, is a superb justification for getting the masses to reproduce if they don't want to do it for any other reason."

  "But surely," said Jeremy, "money is not an inducement for the upper and middle classes, for those who have sufficient income already?"

  "Quite correct. But it is an inducement to the poor, the less educated and the immigrants, including the millions already living off the welfare state. No problem, have four, five, six or more children, WE WILL PAY YOU FOR IT! Or rather, we, the clowns, won't. But our taxpayers will—including the ones who have determined that they themselves can't reasonably afford to have more children, or simply don't want to—hey, THEY will pay you for it (with, at the same time, the optimistic desire that you, the reproducer, will spend the money on your babies and not in your pub)."

  "But…"

  "Sure, Jeremy, the consequences are logical and do not need to be discussed. This law, coincidentally, was pushed by a female minister who has seven children of her own—
maybe eight, I can't remember exactly. I repeat that this was a coincidence—she was not trying to push her minority views onto others in order to validate her personal sentiments in this regard. It was just another case of 'more is better'. If they will only do it for money, well…so be it. And—can you believe this—last year the German clowns were formally discussing a separate law for an additional punitive tax on all married persons without children!"

  "Seriously?"

  "Seriously. It's a fact. Check it out. So as you can see, Jeremy, the human race cannot agree on this matter either and the population of human beings on the planet continues to spiral at a disastrous and deadly pace. Before, by the way, we have even solved the problem of how to feed the ones already existing. Millions die of hunger each year, mainly children. Yes, this is an easy enough problem to solve. But we are too stupid to do so. Our lack of intelligence stands in the way."

  "But that doesn't make sense."

  "No."

  "So why do you do allow your species’ reproduction volumes to continue to spiral out of control??"

  "Jeremy, it's your fault for asking the question. We do it because that's the way we are."

  He chuckled. "I walked straight into that one again, Peter, didn't I?"

  "Yup," I said. "And the result of all this, among other things, is that we have a large number of vast megacities of over 20 million people. The biggest is Tokyo-Yokohama with 37 million humans, all crammed together, 6,000 humans per km2 staring out of the tiny holes in their high-rise blocks, squashed in like bees in a beehive. One of many twentieth century science fiction scenarios which are already with us. Needless to say, many parts of these cities are run-down ghettos, crime-breeding areas of unimaginable poverty, ready-made territories for the thriving drug and prostitution trades among others."

  "But you still continue."

  "Yes, Jeremy, we still continue. We continue to cover our planet with concrete at an unheard of and massive pace: housing, roads, factories, hospitals, schools, sport stadiums, restaurants, bars, government buildings, bank buildings, airports, hotels, shopping malls, industrial parks, and so on. The elected clowns call this growth; it is very necessary, oh yes, flap, flap. It cannot be allowed to stop, oh no, it can never be allowed to stop. Thousands of construction companies would go out of business, there would be millions of unemployed. The snowball has to be kept rolling, getting bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier. The poor planet can't handle it anymore. It tries to, but we have already passed the mathematical limit of how many humans can decently live on this small lump of rock. But since we don't realize that, we don't slow down in any way, let alone put a stop to it. And even the elected Chinese birdbrains, flap, flap, are now seriously thinking of relaxing their one child per family rule. It's all very sad."

  "Very sad," said Jeremy, clearly at a loss for further comment.

  "And this finally brings us to environmental matters. The rabbit-like breeding I have just outlined to you, Jeremy, will assist you in understanding the enormity of what we are doing."

  "I have read," said Jeremy, "that a number of your researchers say your species is both mad and stupid if it believes it can pump its very thin atmosphere full of carbon dioxide, sulphur, methane gas and other toxic poisons, destroy vast areas of compensatory forest, poison its oceans with its defecation and a whole host of deadly chemicals, and yet not destroy its habitat within next to no time. Would you agree with those people?"

  "Indeed I would and I do, Jeremy. Both mad and stupid as said. Nevertheless, this is precisely what we are doing. And at the same we are digging out what remains of our planet's guts for minerals, fuel resources and so on. At a frenzied and unprecedented rate."

  "Well…it's your planet of course, but it sounds as if not all of you believe your activities to be dangerous. Otherwise you would stop them."

  "You think so, Jeremy? Well, let me divide this up into land, sea and air. As usual, my knowledge is severely limited and I am therefore restricted to those few facts and examples of which I am aware."

  "Understood as usual, Peter."

  "O.K., Jeremy. Now…our species currently produces about 12 billion tons of waste per year. And that includes way over one trillion plastic bags, by the way…"

  "Did you say 12 billion tons? And over one trillion plastic bags? Every year? Why do you need so many?"

  "We don't need so many, Jeremy. But we don't let that worry us."

  "I wouldn't like to be one of your archeologists in a couple of thousand years' time, that's all I can say."

  "Yes, they will certainly be getting quantity instead of quality. All of this stuff will be doubling and tripling as 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians continue down the road to the consumer levels already attained by our 'developed' areas. Not to mention the Africans, the Indonesians, the South Americans and other large and fast-growing population centers. Immense quantities of this waste are piles of innards, bones, and other remains from slaughterhouses and laboratories—don't forget the billions of land animals we butcher every year—hospital and other medical refuse including human organs and syringes, around 40 million tons of poisonous electronic waste, and of course other toxic wastes, including pesticides and even deadly, radioactive nuclear waste."

  “Nuclear waste?”

  “Yes. From nuclear bombs, nuclear bomb accidents, nuclear reactor accidents, nuclear bomb testing and so on. Huge areas of pollution around the planet: Russia, Ukraine, China, USA, Greenland, Spain, Japan, and so forth, including plenty of island groups used for testing and, of course, the oceans themselves.

  "12 billion tons of overall waste every year, you said. Where do you put it all?"

  "Well, we put it wherever we can. Of course, some of us don't like to keep all of this trash—particularly not the dangerous stuff—and so we cleverly ship it off to other parts of the planet. A lot of it never gets there, it being more profitable to dump it into the oceans in transit…and you don't have to bother with a licence for that. But some of it does arrive, licences having been granted in certain areas by greedy and corrupt birdbrains or dictators who accept large bribes to permit the poisoning of their countries.. That is why, for example, 40,000 tons of hazardous pesticides are lying around right now somewhere in Africa. Just lying around."

  "Just like that?"

  "Just like that, Jeremy. And we have many garbage dumps worldwide, believe me. Let me tell you about one that I have seen with my own eyes. It is located at the seaport of Manila in the Philippines. Smokey Mountain it's called. Smokey Mountain is a human version of hell. It is a stinking, noxious mountain of human waste, about 300,000 m2 in area at the time I saw it and 70 meters high. It reeks of death, it reeks of rotting animal flesh, of excrement, of sulphur, of whatever else you care to name. It is populated by a few hundred garbage dump dwellers: men, women and children who scrape a living by wading through greyish-blue pools of unidentified slimy substances, collecting re-saleable trash such as used condoms, or else burning tires from which they extract the wire which sells for 30 cents per kilo. Smoke pollution, 35 degrees centigrade, high humidity, millions of disease-ridden flies. These people live in huts constructed out of garbage, and some of them are even born there, some marry there and some die there. They contract diseases of the lungs, of the eyes, of the skin, and worse things still."

  "A man-made Hades?" proffered Jeremy.

  "Yes, but don't worry. The elected clowns who created this situation have now had a wonderful idea to resolve it, flap, flap. They are going to close the dump and start shipping all of the shit to an unpopulated, unspoiled island. They may already have started for all I know. A pity about all the poor animals on the island, but what the hell, life is tough. And who cares about a beautiful island anyway? And then we have oil pollution."

  "Oil pollution?"

  "Yes, land-based oil pollution. This far exceeds the oil pollution of the oceans caused by oil tanker disasters, drilling platform catastrophes and so on. Vast swathes of land in countries like Russia, Nigeri
a and many others are polluted with oil. At the same time, a lot of this reaches the sea, about a million tons of it worldwide each year. Let me give you an insignificant example, Aserbaidschan. Aserbaidschan is a relatively small oil-producing country which still manages to run off about 100,000 tons per year of contaminated oil into the Caspian Sea. And as we stand at our petrol station tanking up our car for €100, we don't see and we don’t want to see the local oil workers, who earn about €200 per month to pump the oil overflows into the stinking drainage ditches which traverse the blackened sludge of the silent and lifeless Baku landscape. Nor do we see the resulting deaths of millions of birds and marine life. The main thing is, we get to tank our car."

  Including myself of course.

  "To summarize, Jeremy, we pollute everything everywhere. There are huge garbage dumps all over the planet. We even have a smallish one on our planet’s highest point, Mount Everest. There are an estimated 50 tons of garbage up there right now."

  "O.K., I've got the picture. Do you think we could stop there and move on to the pollution of your oceans?"

  Good. As usual, I was doing my best to give him his money's worth. But, also as usual, the less time it took, so much the better.

  "Right you are, Jeremy. First of all, you should know that we continue to poison our oceans by the minute. We shovel around 8 million tons of garbage, including toxic waste, into our seas every year. The cumulative effect of this is tremendous. The Pacific Ocean now has an area which is no more and no less than a floating sump of human garbage covering—it's a fact, check it out—over 1 million km2. And yes indeed, like everything else, it is growing. This causes the death of millions of marine life forms each year, including a million seabirds which swallow plastic refuse, seals which become entangled in objects such as beer crates, and so on and so forth. Even a relatively small ocean such as the North Sea is fed about 30,000 tons of our ghastly mixtures every year. And then we have large amounts of radioactive nuclear waste lying around on our sea floors, some of which has already started to leak out into the sea. And then we have the ships."